Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Eesti/2021

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Application or grant stage: in progress
Applicant or grantee: Wikimedia Eesti
Amount requested: 63.037,20 EUR
Amount granted: 63,037 EUR
Funding period: 1 January 2021 - 31 December 2021
Midpoint report due: 15 July 2021
Final report due: 30 January 2021

Application[edit]

Background[edit]

Annual Plan[edit]

This year we're expecting to continue working in the same general direction as in 2020 (or rather, as in the 2020 plan before a lot of it got hit by COVID). See the program descriptions below for more info on our approach. The main change we're hoping for is an increase in staff positions from 1.5 to 2.0 FTE in order to hire an organizational manager (see staffing plan below), which we already requested last year but was denied because of limited funding availability. Citing from the 2020 proposal:

As a chapter, the main problem we found last year was that with our current structure, there's a lot of pressure placed on the board to actually be an active part of everything the chapter does day to day. This limits the ability of the board to act as a strategic / supervisory board, making it into more of a many-headed [organizational manager]. Our main objective for this year (apart from the per-program objectives described below) is to move more of our [management] (...) day-to-day tasks onto funded employee positions, freeing the board to concentrate on activities more appropriate for a board of volunteers while creating a clearer, more consistent day to day working structure for the employees.

Budget Plan[edit]

Proposed Budget 2020-2021
Programme 1: Education
Item EUR Notes
International Wiki Science Competition 3.000,00€ of which 2.000,00 € sponsor funding
Copyright teaching for schools 1.000,00€
Education projects 1.000,00€
Total 5.000,00 € of which WMF funding: 3.000,00 €
Programme 2: GLAM
Item EUR Notes
Wikidata tool and documentation development 1.000,00€
GLAM projects 1.000,00€
International GLAM cooperation 600,00€
Photo-expeditions 800,00€
Total 3.400,00 €
Programme 3: Open Culture and Outreach
Item EUR Notes
Competitions 5.700,00 € of which 4.000,00 € sponsor funding
Finno-Ugric cooperation 1000,00 € Support/training for smaller Finno-Ugric wiki communities
Total 6.700,00 € of which WMF funding: 2.700,00 €
Community support
Item EUR Notes
Meetings and events 2200,00 €
Community awards 700 € Wikipedian of the month, photographer of the year, etc.
Total 2.900,00 €
Staffing Expenses
Item EUR Notes
Organizational Manager 10.276,80 € 0.5 FTE, including social tax
Project Manager (Education) 10.276,80 € 0.5 FTE, including social tax
Project Manager (GLAM) 10.276,80 € 0.5 FTE, including social tax
Communication/Outreach Manager 10.276,80 € 0.5 FTE, including social tax
Total 41.107,20 €
Other Operational Expenses
Item EUR Notes
Office rent 1.920,00 €
Accounting 1.860,00 €
Transportation 4.470,00 € including potential Wikimania travel
Other costs 1.680,00 € equipment, gifts/swag and general operational costs
Total 9.930,00 €
Total BUDGET 69.037,20 € of which WMF funding: 63.037,20 €

Staffing Plan[edit]

  • Job title: Organizational Manager
    • Who is filling this role?: Either Ivo Kruusamägi (vacating the Project Manager for Education position) or a new candidate we will start looking for once the funding is confirmed.
    • Brief description: The Organizational Manager is in charge of running the day to day affairs of the chapter. They oversee the work of the other employees, helping them implement the general directions suggested by the board of directors. Additionally, they deal with minor but important day to day organizational issues (organizing transport, making small purchases, ensuring bills are paid on time, etc.). They report directly to the Board of Directors.
    • Indication of FTE and duration of work: 0.5 FTE, permanent contract (as mandated by Estonian law).
  • Job title: Project Manager (Education)
    • Who is filling this role?: Either Ivo Kruusamägi, who has been in the role (or similar ones) since its inception, or a new candidate we will start looking for once the funding is confirmed.
    • Brief description: The Project Manager for Education is in charge of finding opportunities for cooperation with educational institutions and running the projects that develop from those opportunities. They are also expected to cooperate with the Communication/Outreach Manager to more generally promote open culture and the Wikimedia projects to educational institutions. They report to the Organizational Manager on day to day duties, and to the chapter members via weekly update meetings in Slack.
    • Indication of FTE and duration of work: 0.5 FTE, permanent contract (as mandated by Estonian law).
  • Job title: Project Manager (GLAM)
    • Who is filling this role?: Ivo Kruusamägi, who has been in the role (or similar ones) since its inception.
    • Brief description: The Project Manager for GLAM is in charge of finding opportunities for cooperation with GLAM institutions and running the projects that develop from those opportunities. They are also expected to cooperate with the Communication/Outreach Manager to more generally promote open culture and the Wikimedia projects to GLAM institutions. They report to the Organizational Manager on day to day duties, and to the chapter members via weekly update meetings in Slack.
    • Indication of FTE and duration of work: 0.5 FTE, permanent contract (as mandated by Estonian law).
  • Job title: Communication/Outreach Manager
    • Who is filling this role?: Kristel Birgit Potsepp, who has been in the role since early 2020.
    • Brief description: The Communication/Outreach Manager is in charge of the chapter's internal and external communication. They run the chapter's blog and social media pages, help organize and promote events, and make sure the chapter members and the general public are kept up to date on the chapter's activities and on anything interesting happening in the Estonian Wikiverse. They also help the project managers promote their projects as needed. They report to the Organizational Manager on day to day duties, and to the chapter members via weekly update meetings in Slack.
    • Indication of FTE and duration of work: 0.5 FTE, permanent contract (as mandated by Estonian law).

Strategic plan[edit]

We have had general strategic goals for a couple years (available in Estonian on our site) but we haven't been able to turn them into a specific strategic plan yet (see above for the limitations of a day-to-day managing board). We expect to be able to work on this once the board is not on charge of directing all the activities.

Introduction[edit]

Wikimedia Eesti was founded in 2010 and since then has been promoting open culture and Wikimedia projects in Estonia, working with everyone from educational and GLAM institutions to the Academy of Sciences of Estonia and the President of the Republic.

In these 10 years we've worked on plenty of activities we're very proud of. One example is the Miljon+ project, in which we collaborated with the main universities in the country to include Wikipedia article writing in their curricula with the goal of eventually reaching a million Wikipedia articles in Estonian. The Estonian Wikipedia is now the biggest one in the Baltics, with well over 200000 articles (one of the top Wikipedias in the world in both number of articles and editors per capita) and by now thousands of university students have written at least one Wikipedia article and this is considered standard practice. Another example is our international Wiki Science Competition, improving the scientific imagery in Commons since 2011. In general, images are one of our strengths, with Estonian-related content making up 2% of featured images in Wikimedia Commons (not bad for such a small country, we'd say).

Our vision for the future of the Estonian society is that as big as possible a part of it should be involved in the sharing of free knowledge, and that Wikimedia-related projects should become the place where most of this sharing takes place. All of our programs are designed to lead to this vision, be it by introducing open culture, free knowledge and the Wikimedia projects to more people, by improving the content available, or by working to make the Estonian legal and institutional environment more welcoming to the ideas of free open culture.

Programs[edit]

Education

Our goal with this program is to ensure that Wikimedia projects are useful for Estonian educational institutions and students, and that they also work to improve the projects in return, creating a loop that leads to ever-improving benefits to both the Estonian education system and Wikimedia. In following our central vision, we aspire to reach every level of the system, to ensure the involvement with Wikimedia and free knowledge is not limited to a one-off exercise or course for the students, but becomes a natural part of their education. We aim to make it better understood that working on the Estonian Wikipedia enables significant and meaningful learning while contributing to community and outreach tasks, and that Wikipedia (both its English and Estonian versions) is also a great resource for CLIL.

By collaborating with educational institutions, we can ensure students are introduced to the Wikimedia projects in a deeper way than just “searching for something on Wikipedia”, that they understand they too can help improve the content for others, and that they learn how exactly to do it. Our past efforts have already led to many courses in Estonian universities including at least one exercise where students write or improve an article in the Estonian Wikipedia that is connected with their area of expertise, and we have a strong partnership with the University of Tartu. Maintaining our presence in higher education and expanding to other levels of education (ideally through work with the Ministry of Education) are our main plans for this program.

Program Objectives
  • Introduce new cooperation projects with at least three (3) new educational institutions, preferably outside higher education
  • Make sure educational use of Wikimedia projects is not painful by providing support to teachers and answering any doubts they send in a maximum of two (2) working days (or as fast as possible if it requires us to do extra research).
  • Collect at least 12.000 images and videos on scientific topics through the Wiki Science Competition (and work with local organizers to see that it gets promoted in their national educational institutions)

Planned activities

  • Working with schools to introduce Wikimedia projects to students
  • Supporting teachers and (if needed) students with their Wikimedia problems
  • Hosting the Wiki Science Competition
  • Putting together teaching materials on copyright and open culture

Why are we doing this?

We want to work towards a future where every scientific article, research project and even university thesis written in Estonia leaves a trace in the Estonian Wikipedia, even if it’s only one sentence. The Estonian Wikipedia is especially important in this regard because the danger of English becoming the main language of academia remains strong in Estonia, and a lack of quality scientific content in the Estonian Wikipedia and in Estonian in general means students get used to defaulting to English content for most of their searches already before they start higher education.

Additionally, we want to make sure Estonians understand the collaborative system behind Wikimedia projects; reaching them through educational institutions is the easiest way to ensure all sorts of people are aware of the projects and the system, including those who wouldn’t necessarily think about contributing without these tasks but might still enjoy it.

Program metrics and targets
  • Number of new educational institutions working with Wikimedia projects: 3
  • Number of content pages created or improved by students: 500
  • Number of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons during the Wiki Science Competition: 12.000


GLAM

Our goal with this program is to take advantage of the wealth of quality content and data owned or maintained by Estonian GLAM institutions, and make it available to the public through Wikimedia projects. In return, we will do our best to give back to the GLAM institutions both by making their collections more visible and by figuring out ways our systems can be used to help more directly. We intend to link GLAM content more broadly into our everyday activities: use it to engage more volunteers, involve the local communities, help make it available for education, etc.

We have had contacts with GLAM institutions for a long time, and in 2018 we started two large scale cooperation programs with museums. One of them, with the Estonian Museum of Natural History, was completed in 2019. By then we had already seen other museums show interest in cooperating, and in 2020 we engaged several more of them with small projects to give them a taste of the Wikimedia world. We want to keep expanding the number of museums we work with by looking into new types of cooperation projects including rephotography, digitization and virtual exhibitions.

Program Objectives
  • Introduce new cooperation projects with at least ten (10) new institutions.
  • Arrange at least ten (10) photo-expeditions
  • Collect at least 1000 images via content partnerships.

Planned activities

  • Working with GLAM institutions to make more of their data and content publicly available
  • Improving and expanding our set of Wikidata tools to import Estonian GLAM data
  • Organizing photo-expeditions to GLAM institutions to help digitize materials
  • Working with our Latvian and Nordic neighbors on common GLAM activities

Why are we doing this?

There’s obviously a huge amount of knowledge available through GLAM institutions, produced and curated by experts in their relevant fields. By making as much of this content as possible available under free licenses in Wikimedia projects, we expect to see an increase in both the amount and the quality of the coverage of Estonian-related topics not only in Estonian projects, but also globally, as such making Estonian culture and the efforts of our GLAM institutions more visible to the world and even to our own Estonian users. Additionally, GLAM institutions can be very important allies in our efforts to improve open and free knowledge in Estonia, and forging strong partnerships is definitely in our interest.

Program metrics and targets
  • Number of new institutions working with Wikimedia projects: 10
  • Number of media files created during photo-expeditions: 1.000
  • Number of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in relation to content partnerships: 1.000

Open culture and outreach

Our goal with this program is to promote open culture in Estonia in the form of public events, meetings, opinion pieces, and active policy formation. This encompasses awareness building and collaboration with organisations and institutions that relate to the culture and information society. Of course, we aim to specifically promote the Wikimedia projects as the main repository for the culture that is being made open, but we think it's important for people to understand open culture in general and not only specifically understand Wikipedia.

We need to work on two levels for this goal. On one side, we need to help the wider Estonian community understand what open culture is, what they can do with it and why it matters. In this area we have made heavy use of media appearances (for example with appearances on state TV and multiple radio channels and newspapers explaining both how Wikipedia itself works and how people can help improve it). We plan to continue doing this and also to work on more direct actions, like making the work of authors entering the public domain more available to the community. On the other side, we need to use our experience in the field to get into the public discourse at a higher level, trying to have an influence on political and legal decisions that might either strengthen or endanger open culture. This we have done through the media, but also in collaboration with cultural institutions and information society organisations like Open Knowledge, Internet Society, the Free Software Foundation, UNESCO, the Open Government Partnership and their relevant local branches, and sometimes by directly getting in touch with politicians and parties and presenting our concerns or suggestions to them.

Finally, as one of the strongest Wikimedia chapters in the Finno-Ugric world, we also aim to promote the Wikimedia projects and open culture in smaller Finno-Ugric communities.

Program Objectives
  • Participate in at least five (5) meetings or consultations with representatives of stakeholders or policymakers.
  • Get our activities and/or Wikimedia projects featured in the media at least five (5) times.
  • Organize at least two (2) Wikipedia competitions and two (2) Commons competitions for Estonian Wikimedians.

Planned activities

  • Participating in public discussion about open culture
  • Promoting open culture to the public and recruiting new Wikimedians
  • Organizing competitions to engage both existing and new Wikimedians
  • Helping digitize public domain content (see also GLAM)
  • Helping to train Wikipedians for smaller Finno-Ugric communities

Why are we doing this?

Our aim is to make as large a part of our culture as possible available to everyone, both through the Wikimedia projects specifically and by ensuring that the legal and social environment in Estonia is favorable to the growth of open culture (and open data, open technologies, open source, open government and other similar concerns). For that, two things are important: one is making sure Wikimedia Eesti is recognised as an expert in these topics, so that we are invited to be part of the discussions where we can influence national developments. The other is that the Estonian Wikimedia community grows, and its members are happy and remain committed to the movement's goals.

Program metrics and targets
  • Number of meetings and consultations participated in: 5
  • Number of media features of Wikimedia-related material: 5
  • Number of content pages improved or created during competitions: 1.000
  • Number of pictures and videos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons during competitions: 1.000

Grant Metrics Reporting[edit]

Metrics, targets and results at the grants metrics worksheet.

Needs Request[edit]

Requests for programmatic support[edit]

With the international Wiki Science Competition, we could always use some support in one or more of the following tasks:

  • getting some sponsors for the international event (does the WMF have any existing contacts with companies that might be interested to sponsor?)
  • developing better banners (the fundraising team might be good with those?)
  • providing some coverage for the competition (by writing about it on any foundation communication channels that seem relevant, be it blogs, mailing lists or social media profiles)

Midterm report[edit]

Program Progress[edit]

The office of Wikimedia Estonia in Tartu as a part of the Sofa Office (door no. 7)

In January we hired Käbi Laan as office manager (0.5 FTE) and in spring we moved into a new office space that suits our needs better. We have slowly grown the subscriber base of the Wikipedia newsletter that we started in 2020 and it is now almost 100.

On June 12th we had a general meeting. There will be one more on July 18th (where we expect to choose some new board members for the chapter) as part of the Wikipedia summer days in Estonia that we are organizing.

Education program

We have hired a new education project manager, Pille Priks (0.5 FTE), who started working on July 1st.

We've been working with partners at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and the Tallinn University of Technology to develop “timelines of world history” that could be used in education.

We have also started developing a project in collaboration with Integratsiooni Sihtasutus (Integration Foundation) dedicated to high school students in Ida-Viru County. The idea of the project is to introduce Estonian Wikipedia in the form of a photography competition to students from Ida-Virumaa which is a region with the highest % of Russian minority in Estonia. The project is also dedicated to integrate students with Russian speaking backgrounds to Estonian cultural space, hence the collaboration with Integratsiooni Sihtasutus. We plan to start the project itself in the upcoming Fall, but the preparations started already in March.

We are offering internships to students from universities. This year we had a Sociology intern from the University of Tartu who conducted a user survey in the Estonian Wikipedia.

GLAM program

One of the paintings by Tiit Pääsuke that is now in Wikimedia Commons. "Kris & Kris I" (2016)

As a part of our long-term cooperation with Tartu Art Museum we now have a set of audio files of visual descriptions of Estonian paintings in Wikimedia Commons. Ten of them already existed before (on the museum website) but are now more widely distributed thanks to this cooperation, and five were created as part of this initiative. We also got some paintings from Tiit Pääsuke and assembled a virtual exhibition on the topic mixing together the visuals and descriptions of them. This was our first project that targeted blind or visually impaired people and we hope that it will inspire future collaborations.

We got our hand at the first 360° panoramas at the end of 2019. In 2020 the main focus was on 360° panoramas of vocational schools in Estonia and in 2021 we have our first sets of 360° panoramas of various museums. How does that look like:

Open culture and outreach

Winners of Keeletoimetamistalgud 2021

The Keeletoimetamistalgud took place for the 4th time: 23 participants edited 491 articles. This competition deals directly with the quality of language used in the articles and it is aimed towards professional copy editors. As such it plays an important role in helping to ensure the quality of the content in the Estonian Wikipedia. Due to COVID restrictions the awarding ceremony was held in virtual form.

The 7th CEE Spring resulted in 10 participants creating 664 articles in the Estonian Wikipedia. This time we expanded the competition to also cover the Võru Wikipedia. It was the 2nd article competition ever held in that language version and there were 6 participants who created 30 articles. At the end of last year we helped to set up a new front page for that language version and we have also tried to promote it more. It is showing some results, but promoting it is challenging, as Võro is mainly a spoken language and hardly anyone can write according to the language rules.

The Estonian version of Wikiquote has kept growing at a fast pace. It has now reached the 11th place among all language versions and by the end of the year we estimate it might rise five more positions. Last year’s program story "Fighting gender gap in Estonian Wikiquote" is still relevant today and we feel it is a good example on how to make improvements on this field in a non-intrusive way. In addition there is also a program to incorporate as many artworks by female artists as possible.

We have been in active communication with people from Kadrina. We hope that this kind of example of common people from one parish coming together to work on Wikipedia content will inspire other parishes in Estonia. In order to promote this idea we have also looked for contacts in other local municipalities. This is part of our long-term project of reaching all corners of Estonia.

For spring we also planned an image competition in cooperation with Ajapaik, but due to slow development progress on the Ajapaik side (not helped by the difficulties in working with their Finnish colleagues while borders are closed), we are having to postpone it.

The Government Office has made several batches of image donations (of images related to both the COVID pandemic and the government members themselves). The Estonian Land Board has confirmed that their images under Maa-amet OpenData licence can be imported into Wikimedia Commons. We've also promoted Wikipedia to the members of Estonian Sculptors' Union and have been in contact with the Estonian Writers' Union. We have also had some discussions with people documenting intangible cultural heritage.

We held Wikipedia workshops at the Finno-Ugric Film Festival in Sänna and were present at VIII World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples in Tartu.

In relation to Wikipedia 20 there was a longer interview with Ivo Kruusamägi on Vikerraadio (the most popular radio program in Estonia) and we helped to organize a Ööülikool interview/seminar about the digital world.

We have continued to work on educating the press on how to reuse Commons content. We also had to elevate a complaint to ERR (the state news broadcaster), since they decided to translate and publish a Daily Mail article about Wikipedia, which claimed it to be biased, without even contacting anyone for a reply nor trying to offer an alternative opinion.

We have also worked to get some data from the business registry and about natural monuments into Wikidata.

Spending update Midterm[edit]

Spending
Programme 1: Education
Item EUR
International Wiki Science Competition 0€
Copyright teaching for schools 0€
Education projects 0€
Total 0 €
Programme 2: GLAM
Item EUR
Wikidata 0€
GLAM projects 0€
International GLAM cooperation 0€
Photo-expeditions 0€
Total 0 €
Programme 3: Open Culture and Outreach
Item EUR
Competitions 500.00 €
Finno-Ugric cooperation 50.00 €
Total 550.00 €
Community support
Item EUR
Meetings and events 274.44 €
Community awards 119.59 €
Total 394.03 €
Staffing Expenses
Item EUR
Organizational Manager 3,386.88 €
Project Manager (Education) 3,870.72 €
Project Manager (GLAM) 3,870.72 €
Communication/Outreach Manager 3,872.99 €
Social taxes 4,911.14 €
Total 19,912.45 €
Other Operational Expenses
Item EUR
Office rent 936.00 €
Accounting 1,020.00 €
Transportation 141.51 €
Other costs 938.80 €
Total 3,036.31 €
Total SPENDING 23,892.79 €


The total amount of Simple APG funds spent during the 1st half of grant period: 23,892.79 €

Grant Metrics Reporting Midterm[edit]

Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.

Final report[edit]

Program Progress[edit]

The office of Wikimedia Estonia in Tartu as a part of the Sofa Office (door no. 7)

In January we hired Käbi Laan as office manager (0.5 FTE) and in spring we moved into a new office space that suits our needs better.

We have hired a new education project manager, Pille Priks (0.5 FTE), who started working on July 1st. In mid-august, we hired a new GLAM projects coordinator Kerdo Kristjan Tamm (0.5 FTE), who has been actively searching for new cooperation opportunities with different GLAM institutions.

We have slowly grown the subscriber base of the Wikipedia newsletter that we started in 2020 and it is now a bit over 100.

On June 12th we had a general meeting. On July 18th we held another general meeting, where we selected two new board members: Ivo Kruusamägi and Jaan Meriniit. Since that meeting, the board of Wikimedia Eesti consists of 4 members.


Education program

Wikipedia work in higher education

Coaching teachers of Pühajärve primary school

We've been working with partners at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and the Tallinn University of Technology to develop “timelines of world history” that could be used in education.

There was also a new Wikipedia-related course in the Estonian Academy of Arts.

We have been in contact with student societies and sororities – in particular with sorority Amicita – and we have agreed to help them conduct a Wikipedia writing project(s) to celebrate their 100th anniversary.

Thus far we have close contacts with the University of Tartu – one of the examples from this year in cooperation with University of Tartu Youth Academy in terms of organizing a 30-h writing contest together that was intended for students from primary and secondary schools as well as for university students.

Wikipedia work in elementary and high schools

We have been consistent with the work with elementary and primary schools. This year we have been present at both school levels. For example, our education project manager has been coaching teachers of Pühajärve primary school and students from Kadrina High School. Some of these outcomes are visible in Estonian Wikipedia (both from the viewpoint of students and teachers). Kadrina High Scool also has a project page.

We are offering internships to students from universities. This year we had a Sociology intern from the University of Tartu who conducted a user survey in the Estonian Wikipedia. We have also been actively spreading the call for interns and volunteers in various education-related channels. At the beginning of September, we were also present in the student’s fair organized by students network Ole Rohkem, where different organizations are looking for volunteers and interns.

Other education related projects

Pille Priks attending training session

We have started developing a project in collaboration with Integration Foundation dedicated to high school students in Ida-Viru County. The idea of the project is to introduce Estonian Wikipedia in the form of a photography competition to students from Ida-Virumaa which is a region with the highest % of the Russian minority in Estonia. The project is also dedicated to integrating students with Russian-speaking backgrounds to Estonian cultural space, hence the collaboration with Integratsiooni Sihtasutus. We had intentions to initiate the project itself in 2021, but due to complicated times, the project is waiting to be executed in 2022.

Our education project manager Pille Priks took part in the training program “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom” and is now a certified trainer of trainers. One of the outcomes of this training is to create a special platform for teachers to use in Estonian as well as give our teachers the best-structured know-how about Wikipedia.

At the end of the year, we're also making preparations to apply to become a strategic partner of the Ministry of Education and Research.

As part of Wikipedia Art Month, we promoted art-related content in Wikipedia to Estonian art schools.

GLAM program

One of the paintings by Tiit Pääsuke that is now in Wikimedia Commons. "Kris & Kris I" (2016)

As a part of our long-term cooperation with Tartu Art Museum we now have a set of audio files of visual descriptions of Estonian paintings in Wikimedia Commons. Ten of them already existed before (on the museum website) but are now more widely distributed thanks to this cooperation, and five new ones were created as part of this initiative. We also got some paintings from Tiit Pääsuke and assembled a virtual exhibition on the topic mixing together the visuals and descriptions of them. This was our first project that targeted blind or visually impaired people and we hope that it will inspire future collaborations.

We got our hand at the first 360° panoramas at the end of 2019. In 2020 the main focus was on 360° panoramas of vocational schools in Estonia and in 2021 we have our first sets of 360° panoramas of various museums. What does that look like:

After years of planning, we have pioneered a project of “Mobile photo studio” and the first outcome of this project was related to documenting Tartu City Museum historical collection. A similar project is already planned for January – to capture the collection of historical clocks. A few examples of the historical collection:

In the Fall we managed to take part in a training course about digitizing, organized by Archaeovision.

We were also present at the national summer seminar of Estonian GLAM institutions and participated in the national analysis on how to make digital cultural heritage more accessible.

The traveling exhibition about the science photo competition has been touring around Estonia with the last locations being the Library of Adavere and in the lobby of Tallinn University of Technology. Also, some of the photos were present in Voronja Gallery in the summer.

”Kolmekesi ühes paadis” (2003) Margus Rump

For the first time during October, we organized a project called “The Wikipedia Art Month”. The purpose of the project was to get art and Wikipedia in the focus. We introduced Wikipedia to several artists who contributed with some of their artwork. Alongside we held three online lectures about Wikidata, Using Wikipedia in the Universities, and about using Wikipedia in the studies of art. Also, a writing competition took place as part of the art month. More from GLAM newsletter.

We have continued our work with photo expeditions, but unfortunately not to the desired extent, due to the coronavirus. However, for the first time, the expedition has been conducted in the county of Lääne-Virumaa. Also, an experience story about the expedition has been published in our blog to encourage others to organize an expedition as well.

Open culture

The island of Sorgu – one of the donated images by Maa-amet

The Government Office has made several batches of image donations (of images related to both the COVID pandemic and the government members themselves). The Estonian Land Board has confirmed that their images under Maa-amet OpenData license can be imported into Wikimedia Commons. We've also promoted Wikipedia to the members of the Estonian Sculptors' Union and have been in contact with the Estonian Writers' Union. We have also had some discussions with people documenting intangible cultural heritage.

We have continued to work on educating the press on how to reuse Commons content. We also had to elevate a complaint to ERR (the state news broadcaster), since they decided to translate and publish a Daily Mail article about Wikipedia, which claimed it to be biased, without even contacting anyone for a reply nor trying to offer an alternative opinion. In the midsummer, we sent out detailed instructions to media houses in Estonia, about how to reuse Commons content and about the correct way to refer to the author.

We have worked to get some data from the business registry and about natural monuments into Wikidata.

In the wind of celebrating the 19th anniversary of Estonian Wikipedia, we managed to collect seven new institutions to sign the Public Domain Manifesto. New signatories include Estonian Museum of Natural History, Tartu University Library, Estonian Literary Museum, Institute of the Estonian Language, Estonian National Heritage Board, Tartu Artists’ Union / Tartu Art House, Tartu Art Museum.

Community and outreach

Local community

Estonian Wikipedia summer days 2021 group photo

Our biggest community event is yet our big summer meeting, where we had presentations about ongoing projects, CEE Spring award ceremony, etc. This year we organized it in the countryside and approximately 25 people took part in this event.

We celebrated the 19th anniversary of Estonian Wikipedia and gathered in Tartu and in Tallinn. Besides the anniversary we also celebrated Christmas with NGO members and Wikipedia volunteers in Tallinn and in Tartu and joined the event with another award ceremony – the awards for Art Month were given out.

Celebrating 19th anniversary in Tallinn

We have continuously been giving out the award for The Best Wikipedian of the Month, who is selected by the community. For the 5th time we gave out an award for the Best Photographer and the best in 2021 is Virgo Siil (article in media). His contribution includes many drone pictures like the one that can be seen on the left.

The Friend of Wikipedia 2021 is Tartu Art Museum for close and effective collaboration in the field of virtual exhibitions and bringing more art to Wikipedia.

Swimming in a bog during big summer meeting – a picture by Virgo Siil
Friend of Wikipedia 2021 – Tartu Art Museum

We have been steadily increasing the base of our newsletter receivers – our newsletter is issued once or twice a month.

The board of Wikimedia Eesti has started a local strategy process – we have had 3 meetings since and the process is ongoing. The outcome of this process should reflect the NGO’s main ambitions and particular activities required to meet the objectives.

In November the first small-scale Wikiclub was initiated in Tartu. The aim of the club is to show how different activities in Wikipedia can be fun and social. Wikiclub people meet once a month and have discussions about different aspects of the Wikipedia world, learn new things, help each other with upcoming problems, share knowledge and experience and initiate new joint activities such as article writing, photo tours, etc. This club is a piloting project to test if this kind of format is viable and should be used more widely.

Our local community was also present in international meetings – we were participating in Wikimania, CEE online meeting and also held a discussion during the Nordic meeting (where we inspired Danes to assemble a similar list to our "Eesti 1000").

Around the time of Estonian Wikipedias’ 19th anniversary, we also held a meeting with Kaarel Vaidla to get a better insight to the ongoing strategy process of Wikimedia Foundation.

Competitions

Writing competitions
Winners of Keeletoimetamistalgud 2021

The Keeletoimetamistalgud took place for the 4th time: 23 participants edited 491 articles. This competition deals directly with the quality of language used in the articles and it is aimed towards professional copy editors. As such it plays an important role in helping to ensure the quality of the content in the Estonian Wikipedia. Due to COVID restrictions, the awarding ceremony was held in virtual form.

The 7th CEE Spring resulted in 10 participants creating 664 articles in the Estonian Wikipedia. This time we expanded the competition to also cover the Võru Wikipedia. It was the 2nd article competition ever held in that language version and there were 6 participants who created 30 articles. At the end of last year, we helped to set up a new front page for that language version and we have also tried to promote it more. It is showing some results, but promoting it is challenging, as Võro is mainly a spoken language and hardly anyone can write according to the language rules.

As mentioned above, during the art month we held another writing competition – a competition where art and artists were in the focus. Our partners in organizing this competition were Tartu Art Museum and Tartu Art House. As a result, 51 new articles were created and 9 users took part in the competition.

The team of Pühajärve primary school for 30-h writing competition

Our last but not least writing competition took place at the beginning of December. The 30-h Wikipedia writing challenge was a competition organized together with the University of Tartu Youth Academy. Ten teams took part in the competition, altogether with 33 participants. The youngest teams were part of primary school and the oldest ones were university students. The outcome of the challenge is ten thorough articles about local municipalities of Estonia, the topics were given out as a lottery. The story about that competition is also present in Education Newsletter.

Image competitions

For spring we planned an image competition in cooperation with Ajapaik, but due to slow development progress on the Ajapaik side (not helped by the difficulties in working with their Finnish colleagues while borders are closed), we have to postpone it.

We held a week-long campaign to collect photos made of cultural heritage objects in Estonia. We had 92 images. Some of the contributions:

Selecting the winning images of Estonian Science Photo Competition 2021

The Science photo competition was held locally from November to December and the international competition round is yet to be held in the first half of 2022. Local round gave us 112 files from 32 different authors. We are also the ones organizing the international part of the competition.

Some of the winning files from that competition in Estonia:

We also have been part of organizing the photo competition of the nature magazine Eesti Loodus (Estonian Nature) to encourage authors to contribute these files also to Wikimedia Commons. From there we gathered nearly a thousand photos, but they were first collected to the server of Eesti Loodus magazine and we are still organizing the upload of the images to Wikimedia Commons.

Wikiquote

The Estonian version of Wikiquote has kept growing at a fast pace. It had reached 11th place for July among all language versions and by the end of the year, the Estonian Wikiquote is already in the sixth position! Last year’s program story "Fighting gender gap in Estonian Wikiquote" is still relevant today and we feel it is a good example of how to make improvements in this field in a non-intrusive way. In addition, there is also a program to incorporate as many artworks by female artists as possible. Wikiquote also got a brand new design for its homepage thanks to our help.

Estonian Wikiquote was also present at CEE Online Meeting, where Eva Lepik and Raul Veede held a lightning talk: Estonian Wikiquote: how to get your wikiproject into the top ten in a year (and all the ladies).

Other community and outreach work

Sänna Libray where Wikipedia workshop was held during Finno-Ugric Film Festival

We have been in active communication with people from Kadrina. We hope that this kind of example of common people from one parish coming together to work on Wikipedia content will inspire other parishes in Estonia. In order to promote this idea, we have also looked for contacts in other local municipalities. This is part of our long-term project of reaching all corners of Estonia.

We held Wikipedia workshops at the Finno-Ugric Film Festival in Sänna and were present at VIII World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples in Tartu. Ivo Kruusamägi talked about Wikipedia in Tallinn Photomonth.

Kotkajärve Forest University, which is a traditional gathering of foreign Estonias, was held in virtual form in August. Ivo Kruusamägi talked there about how to contribute to Wikipedia.

In relation to Wikipedia 20, there was a longer interview with Ivo Kruusamägi on Vikerraadio (the most popular radio program in Estonia) and we helped to organize a Ööülikool interview/seminar about the digital world.

We also got some media presence at the Estonian Wikipedia birthday in August ([1]) and worked to get more media mentionings beyond that (like: "Will Wikipedians rescue the Estonian language? It can be done").

Spending[edit]

Spending
Programme 1: Education
Item EUR
International Wiki Science Competition 2500€
Copyright teaching for schools 0€
Education projects 434.97€
Total 2934.97€
Programme 2: GLAM
Item EUR
Wikidata 0€
GLAM projects 837.28 €
International GLAM cooperation 0€
Photo-expeditions 0€
Total 837.28€
Programme 3: Open Culture and Outreach
Item EUR
Competitions 3640€
Finno-Ugric cooperation 50€
Total 3690 €
Community support
Item EUR
Meetings and events 2676.89€
Community awards 758.48€
Total 3435.37€
Staffing Expenses
Item EUR
Organizational Manager 7670€
Project Manager (Education) 9188.4€
Project Manager (GLAM) 7219.91€
Communication/Outreach Manager 7682.52€
Social taxes 10714.97€
Total 42475.8€
Other Operational Expenses
Item EUR
Office rent 2232€
Accounting 1860€
Transportation 3659.36€
Other costs 1708.78€
Total 9460.14€
Total SPENDING 62833.56€

Grant Metrics Reporting[edit]

Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.